[netcan]

I don't buy it. Even in North Korea, I'm pretty sure people know quite a lot.

Hitchens did interviews in the eastern block during the 80s. Everyone knew Kafka, it turned out, once they felt safe letting you know they knew it. Vice news did a tour of Assad's territory at the height of the civil war. Propaganda at the highest levels, with people expected to believe a fiction in extreme contrast to reality. A policeman said to the journalist: "this is 1984 and I am Winston Smith."

It's not easy to put people into Plato's cave.

Reality is more complex than this. When people learn the truth, get woke, take the red pill (note these are all modern references to the cave)... it almost always involves shaking or adopting a complex worldview. Facts play a part, but narrative plays a bigger part. So does emphasis, etc.

Or maybe we're all still in that cave, and the internet just projects some new shapes we haven't seen before. New shapes, new shadows, new wisemen telling us what they mean.